Liberal Alliance's political spokesperson, Mads Strange, now acknowledges that he made "a linguistic error." However, the researcher behind the study believes Strange has compared things that cannot be compared.
DR would have liked to ask Mads Strange how the misunderstanding arose, but he has not been available for an interview. (Photo: © Linda Kastrup, Ritzau Scanpix) 9 minutes ago.
- The larger the public sector you have, the worse the treatment for some of the most vulnerable citizens in the welfare state. And the country that performs by far the worst among these 31 countries is Denmark.
This is what Liberal Alliance's political spokesperson, Mads Strange, says in B.T.'s podcast *Borgerligt Tabloid*, based on a research project he has printed out and brought with him to the studio.
But Mads Strange's interpretation of the research is not correct.
This was first reported by the media outlet TjekDet.
One of the researchers behind the study, Alexi Gugushvili, even calls Strange's interpretation "misleading."
- Mads Strange's interpretation goes beyond what our research documents.
- We did not investigate whether the size of the public sector leads to worse outcomes, nor did we assess how well the countries treat vulnerable citizens. The claim that a larger public sector worsens conditions for people with disabilities is therefore not a conclusion that can be drawn from our study, he says.
Alexi Gugushvili is a professor at the University of Oslo and is behind the research project.
Mads Strange has not been available for an interview, but writes in a written response to DR that he "unfortunately made a linguistic error."
- The study shows that Denmark is the country out of 31 European countries where the difference between citizens with and without disabilities is greatest. I ended up interpreting this as if Denmark is the country where disabled people have it worst. Those two things are not the same, and my statement was not precise enough, he writes.
But even that conclusion cannot be drawn from the study, the researcher says.
- Other countries have larger differences when it comes to education, employment, or life satisfaction, and the picture depends on which outcome measure and which definition one uses. Therefore, it is not correct to say that Denmark has the greatest inequality between persons with disabilities and persons without disabilities, he states.
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Strange compares apples and oranges
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According to the researcher behind the 2023 project, Alexi Gugushvili, Mads Strange makes the mistake of comparing relative inequality with absolute living conditions.
In other words, he is comparing apples and oranges.
Because while it is true that the research project concludes that Denmark has the greatest difference between people with and without disabilities in terms of perceived material wealth, this does not necessarily mean that Danes with disabilities have poorer conditions than people with disabilities in other countries.
The difference can also be large because people without disabilities in a country are doing exceptionally well, Alexi Gugushvili points out.
You can compare it to a school class. If the top students in a class get very high grades, the distance to the students with the lowest grades can be large – even if those students get better grades than the lowest-scoring students in most other classes.
Mads Strange was first elected to the Danish Parliament for Liberal Alliance in the spring of 2026. (Photo: © Linda Kastrup, Ritzau Scanpix)
The researchers point out that a possible explanation for why citizens in strong welfare societies like Denmark may experience a lower quality of life than people with disabilities in other countries is that citizens in strong welfare societies like Denmark have higher expectations of equality and expect a higher baseline level than in other countries.
However, this is not necessarily the same as the standard of living actually being lower.
The episode of *Borgerligt Tabloid* was released on May 20. In recent days, however, Mads Strange has again shared a clip from the episode on his Facebook and Instagram profiles, which has led several people in the comments to question the research behind it.
He now informs DR that he has deleted the video "to avoid misunderstandings."
The research project examines four parameters – education, employment, material wealth, and life satisfaction. (Photo: © Thomas Traasdahl, Ritzau Scanpix)
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Expert: Difficult to compare countries
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According to Alexi Gugushvili, the research article cannot be used to conclude where Denmark stands on the disability front compared to other European countries.
And it is generally difficult to make such a comparison, says Sif Holst, who has worked extensively with disability issues for years. She has previously served on the EU's Economic and Social Committee and was a candidate for the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Today, she is a co-founder of FutureAble, which advises companies and organizations on disability.
- You can, for example, compare in the areas of social services, education, and employment, and within each area you will find that Denmark sometimes does well and sometimes needs to do more, she says.
Looking at access to education and the labor market for people with disabilities, Denmark performs better than the European average, she says.
- And then there are some areas, including legal security and our international obligations under the Disability Convention, where there is justified and substantial criticism, she says.
In 2024, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities issued strong criticism of Denmark for not living up to the UN Disability Convention in a number of areas. The criticism included failed inclusion in schools, the use of psychiatry and coercive measures in residential facilities, and varying treatment from municipality to municipality.
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